Monday, December 8, 2008

Storm of photos (bigger)

These are all of the photos that I've taken so far since I arrived here, about 150 total. I haven't put captions on them yet, though, so if there's one that's confusing, I'd say wait a day or so for me to find the time to add an explanation (or just put up a comment saying "wtf is this?" You'll probably be asking yourself that a lot until I add more info...)



In other news, I just had dinner with the president of the university last night, Mr. Liu (the same one who gave the opening speech before I spoke on the first day.) It was pretty funny...he couldn't speak a word of English, but I could practice the little Chinese I knew and was able to make people laugh with my attempts to speak (specifically colloquialisms in the Wuhan dialect, those always get a laugh as long as they know what they're listening to. In other words, they don't expect foreigners to say stuff like that, so they just ignore them usually even though I'm saying them frickin perfectly.) It was a great time though; we ate at this adorable little place that was basically a dude's house, and ordered a bunch of their best items for the day. One of their specials that day was some soup whose name I can't remember, but it was a little unsettling to eat. It wouldn't have been that bad if they didn't tell me what was in it.. It was a "meat and potato" soup, except the potato was a vegetable that's grown here that I don't really like (it's kindof a mix between a potato and a carrot), and the meat was "fresh" pig's feet (and by fresh, I mean that the owner of the shop had bought the pig yesterday, when it was still breathing). We also ordered a fish, which Mr. Liu told me was, again, fresh. Once again, "fresh" isn't just a day or so old, it means that the fish was swimming in water before it was thrown onto a pan with searing hot oil about 10 minutes before we ate it. He said "if the fish's mouth is open, you know it's fresh." Oh yeah speaking of which, when u order fish here, you get a whole fish that's cut in half from it's head to it's tail fin. The method of eating it is to grab as much of the meat from the bones as you can with your chopsticks., and if you like eating fish eyes, they're right there for the taking. I've actually grabbed a fish eye with my chopsticks before, plucking it from the socket by severing its optic nerve. Pretty gross. OK so back to the point, the food was good, and Mr. Liu was also very entertaining. It's clear why he's who he is -- his character, intelligence and general charisma were all evident despite my inability to understand him. My goal was to exude the same qualities, but that was a bit harder considering the number of English speakers in the room (about 3.5 out of 7 including myself). Regardless, I think we bonded. We drank this rice wine that he brought from his hometown west of Wuhan, which we drank heavy amounts of. At one point I almost reached puke-ville cuz he made me down an entire glass of this stuff... But after that I was cool. OK well I wish I had more time to have made this story better and more touched up but, the gist is that it was entertaining, I got wasted with the pres of Wuhan U, and that it'll likely happen again soon. Now I gotta get back to work.. only a few more weeks and then no work at all...

2 comments:

mj said...

I'm expecting you to be fluent in Chinese cuisine when you return. Just like how I learned how to ( and have yet to) make bread for you. so get crackin! and do some research on how to smuggle this magical fruit you keep talking about on the plane back.

Evan said...

Is it strange that I was eating a you zi when I read your comment?